


the dying of the light

by wordonawing



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Brain Damage, M/M, Major Character Injury, Memory Loss, Sad, like seriously sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 20:47:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordonawing/pseuds/wordonawing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Grantaire feels eyes on him, but when he turns around, there's no one there, save for the man in the corner who stares at him as if he's a blind man and Grantaire is the sun.</p><p>(Or, Grantaire loses his memory.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the dying of the light

Grantaire wakes up alone, as usual.

He wakes up alone, but when he shifts and curls himself up more tightly in the sheets, his foot just brushes a patch of warmth, like someone has spilled a drop of sunlight on the bed, and he smiles and tucks his legs under himself.

There’s a stain on the ceiling that looks a little like a question mark, and he wonders if maybe he should stand on ( _bahorel’s_ _shoulders_ ) a ladder and clean it off or something because it’s spoiling the winter white of the morning.

He gets up and goes to the window, stretching until all the tiny bones in his back click back into place. Down below, a man is standing on the beach, a bolt of red against the slate-grey sand. He’s skimming stones across the water; they splash once, twice, then sink, tiny ripples cascading in their wake. The man looks lost and broken and fragile, like he’ll shatter into a million pieces any second. Grantaire wants to talk to him, but he doesn’t know his name, and besides, he’s hungry.

He’s forgotten about it by the time he slips downstairs, just as he forgets the reason why there are two places at the table and a pot of abandoned coffee simmering comfortably on the stove.

* * *

Sometimes Grantaire goes and sits on the window bench, shoulder braced against the whitewashed wall, and stares out at the foaming sea. He tries to match his breathing to the waves, the gentle motion soothing his skittering heart. Rolling in, rolling out. Like a mother shushing her child.

His legs are stretched out in front of him, the soles of his feet upturned, and he skates his fingers around the ghostly balls of his ankles. They look so fragile, pale against the striped green cushion, that he gets the sudden terrible fear that they’ll shatter like brittle glass if he so much as rests his weight on them. It’s a silly thought, of course, but it stays with him long after the sun has sunk into the sea and the waves have lulled him into a fitful sleep.

(Didn’t he used to dream?)

* * *

He goes down to the beach, although it’s December and the yelling of children has been replaced by the wails of the white gulls and the whisper of the waves. Everything is grey and cold. The water laps around his knees like an eager puppy, and he pets it gently, the droplets clinging to his skin like tiny diamonds.

He reaches across the chasm of the bench to take ( _apollo’s_ ) someone’s hand, and the man smiles, but there’s a quiet longing in his eyes, as if someone loved him once and he misses it more than he can bear.

There’s a sketchbook sitting between them, tossed open at a page bursting with life and colour. It looks wrong amid the drab grey background, as if someone had cut a frame out of a technicolour film and transplanted it into a black-and-white world.

There’s a hand in his, and he stares at it curiously, marvelling at the callouses around the thumbs and the little veins like rivers underneath the skin. He imagines he can see the blood trickling along the vessels, marching in single file.

( _co_ _mbeferre combeferre please oh god combeferre it’s grantaire he’s bleeding oh god please help him help him i_ _can_ ’ _t_ )

He fancies he can see all the way across the sea, to a place where there’s no pain and no confusion and you never wake up screaming in the middle of the night without the faintest idea why.

The weak winter light bounces off the metal on his wrist, and he tightens his fingers around the hand in his, even though he doesn’t know how it got there.

 

* * *

He talks to him, sometimes.

( _w_ _here are we?_

_who are you?_

_who am I?_ )

But whenever he asks, the beautiful man’s eyes go sad, and that makes Grantaire’s chest ache so unbearably that he stops talking for a while.

 _Marry me_ , he says one day, watching the way the light dapples golden hair in splashes of sunlight.

The man lifts their hands, a look in his sky-blue eyes that Grantaire can’t read. There’s a band of silver encircling his fourth finger. Grantaire feels a ghost of something like disappointment.

_Who’s the lucky man?_

There is no reply, save a gentle knuckle rapped against the ring on Grantaire’s finger. Grantaire wonders how it got there.

* * *

When Grantaire was little, all elbows and knees and wide-eyed curiosity, he used to escape through a gap in the hedge and run down the road to where the village kids tumbled and laughed on the grass. He’d hang at the edge, hands twisting behind his back nervously, until one day a kind copper-haired boy gave him a smile and asked if he wanted to play with them. Grantaire nodded timidly, wary of the honesty in his eyes; unused to genuine kindnesses, even then. One of the others clapped their hands over their eyes and start counting loudly. _One, two, three…_ Grantaire tore off immediately, nearly stumbling in his haste, heart pounding like a rabbit fleeing from a dog, the numbers chasing him as he weaved his way into someone’s back garden and under a pile of leaves. They would never think to look here, he was certain. He’d win easily. They’d be so impressed with how clever he was. He’d never sit alone to eat his lunch again.

So he lay there, the earthy smell catching in his throat with every shallow breath, stones digging into his back and shoulders. It began to grow cold, and he zipped his thin sweatshirt up to his chin and jammed his hands in its cavernous pockets.

The light pricking in through the gaps between the leaves dimmed.

Outside his little branch-woven world, an owl hooted softly.

Once, he thought he heard voices close by, and he stiffened and tried very hard to not make a sound. But gradually they faded away, until he couldn’t distinguish them from the whispers in his head.

He went back home and slipped up the stairs, the yells from the kitchen blanketing the creaks of his feet, and wondered if being forgotten would always hurt so much.

* * *

 

There’s an old applewood box buried at the back of the wardrobe that spills books and papers and photographs out onto the floor when he overturns it. He kneels there and sifts through them like a forty-niner panning for gold, faces swimming up to the surface of his mind, flickering, candle-like, before sinking once more.

(There’s a hand in his, and he clings to it like a storm-soaked sailor dragging himself back to shore.)

 _Who’s_ _he?_

_That’s me._

The wardrobe smells familiar, like old friends. The grandfather clock murmurs sadly from the hallway.

_And him?_

(There’s a hand in his, but they fit together badly, as if they once matched, but have since warped and distorted, until the lines don’t quite join up properly.)

_That’s you._

(There are deep gouges in the wall of the cupboard, and when he lifts his fingers to his mouth to chew at his nails, splinters bite into his skin.)

The waves whisper lullabies to the shore.

* * *

Sometimes, Grantaire feels eyes on him, but when he turns around, there's no one there, save for the man in the corner who stares at him as if he's a blind man and Grantaire is the sun.

* * *

There’s a hand in his, and he swings it idly as he stares out to sea.

The locals call this place the End.

Grantaire just wishes he could remember what they started. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> yknow what's hard tagging this shit


End file.
